Various Gaming News
Indie Royale’s The Spring Bundle has been released, featuring six indie games: Futuremark‘s tower defence variant Unstoppable Gorg, Soldak Entertainment‘s action RPG Depths of Peril, Secret Base‘s platformer Tobe’s Vertical Adventure, all available on Steam, and three downloadable games from Radiangames: twin-stick RPG Inferno+, puzzler Slydris, and a twin-stick arcade shooter, Ballistic. The bundle is available on a pay what you want scheme with a minimum price currently just under £3, but those who pay at least $5 or £3.15 will also receive Danimal Cannon’s chiptune music album Roots!
THQ have announced that Darksiders 2 is to be delayed, apparently at the request of Vigil, and will now not launch on July 29th in the UK. This is good news, as it means the developers will be able to properly polish the game. THQ have had a boost from the sales of Saints Row: The Third, which has sold over 4 million copies and brought in more revenue for the company than expected. (more…)
Minecraft – Super Pirate Battle Royale
A friend linked me to Rock Paper Shotgun’s article about Super Pirate Battle Royale for Minecraft.. two huge battleships with working cannons firing TNT!
I thought this was some kind of a mod, but it’s actually a map, which you can download from Planet Minecraft. If, like me, you wanted to take a look around but don’t have access to a server, it does work in singleplayer! To add the map into your game, just copy the folder into your .minecraftsaves folder (mine is C:UsersKristineAppDataRoaming.minecraftsaves).
In the News – 1st March
The release date for Irrational Games’ BioShock Infinite has been revealed: October 16th in the US, and on October 19th internationally, for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. The game will also support the PlayStation Move motion controller, with more details to follow later.. though Eurogamer spotted a “special” BioShock Infinite peripheral on Sony’s website back in November.
Mojang have released Minecraft 1.2 today, adding a slew of new features including new blocks and items, a new jungle biome and a map height limit of 256. On the creature front, ocelots become cats when tamed, and tamed wolves can now have puppies! (more…)
The Bukkit Team Join Mojang!
The four main developers of Bukkit and CraftBukkit, the server-side mod for Minecraft, are now joining Mojang!
This means that we can expect improved mod support in future, not only for Minecraft, but also for those of us running servers! The plan is to build a new server API, and then extend this to support client-side modding.
In the meantime, the team are working to make Bukkit compatible with Minecraft 1.2, to avoid a long gap while the official Minecraft server catches up.
You can read the Bukkit story over on their forum.
New Minecraft Map Format – Anvil
Mojang have developed a new map format for Minecraft, dubbed “Anvil”.
This new format increases maximum build height to 256 from 128, and added scope for many more block types by increasing block IDs to 4096, from 256, as well as a number of other changes to prepare for modding and improved compression.
The next snapshot, and Minecraft 1.2 will automatically convert worlds to the new format. You do not need to convert them yourself.
More information is available here.
Minecraft 1.1 is out!
Mojang have just released the latest update for Minecraft, bringing us up to Minecraft 1.1!
This update adds new features and makes a few tweaks to existing features, as well as the usual bug fixes.
Amongst the new features are bow enchantments, new recipes for golden apples, language settings, world type options, and for creative mode, spawn eggs. Tweaks have been made to the biome generator too, meaning smoother transitions between different biomes.. beaches, smoother hills and so on.
Spawn eggs come in different colours to represent different mobs and villagers, and by placing one as you would any other block, this allows you to place mobs and villagers into your world. Note that you will need to be on a mode other than ‘Peaceful’ for the hostile mobs to appear.
Dragons and Giants
Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim.. I’ve played nothing but this all weekend!
I was going to take a break for some Minecraft, since the new version is out and I wanted to work on my project.. but the CraftBukkit server itself has yet to be upgraded from 1.8. I really should have checked on this before updating my client.. but I didn’t.. and now I either wait for the update, or go and backdate Minecraft to 1.8 again.. yeah.
Laziness won out this time, and I went back into Skyrim..
I was rather chuffed when my power attack caused my character to climb on the dragon’s head! For some reason, I get an error from Steam when I try to upload this screenshot.. or the one of me balancing on tiptoes on his head as he dies..
Yesterday’s explorations took me to a Dwemer dungeon.. I loved the look of this place, though to be honest I loved the previous Dwemer ruins and dungeons too 🙂
Various other explorations brought me face-to-face with some giants. I say face-to-face.. face-to-crotch would be more appropriate!
The one I met on the road didn’t seem to have any interest in attacking me, whether by glitch or design.. but I got into a very tough fight with one later. At this point I’m finding a nice variation in the strength of enemies, with the Giant being a decent threat, but wolves and bandits being easy meat 🙂
Happy Minecraft Day!
Epic block-building creation / survival game Minecraft is now “finished”!
This is a strange thought, considering that we’ve been playing it for over a year now.. and stranger still when you consider that nothing is really going to change.. according to Notch, the team are still going to be adding to the game over the next year.
Therefore, rather than being excited that the game is “finished”, I’m just looking forward to the next update, with new mobs, breeding, and of course all the new items which I can use in my creative project.. despite not having actually launched the game all week thanks to Skyrim and real-life!
The Humble Voxatron Debut
I picked up the Humble Frozen Synapse Bundle at the end of September, paying a rather small figure for a number of rather cool indie games.
The latest Humble Bundle is now out: the Humble Voxatron Debut!
As usual, it’s “pay what you want”,though if you want more than the headline game you need to beat the average paid to date.. an absolute bargain right now, as it’s still under a fiver 🙂
The headline game is an alpha of Lexaloffle’s Voxatron, a “voxel-based, old-school-gone-new platform shooter”, where you explore a world made of destructible blocks; it also comes with a voxel designer and level mapping tools, and the ability to share them with your friends! I wonder if this will be as addictive as Minecraft.. one to explore this weekend, I think!
Also included in the Bundle are the creepy-looking dungeon explorer The Binding of Isaac, by the developers of the equally squicky Super Meat Boy, and puzzle-platform Blocks That Matter by Swing Swing Submarine.
Blocks That Matter sees you play a tiny robot called the Tetrobot, drilling blocks and recombining the materials into other blocks.. it sounds intriguing, but having installed it on my PC at work, I was unable to get it running due to some resolution issue. I’ll be trying this one at home on the Beast instead 🙂
As for The Binding of Isaac.. I saw this advertised on Steam a while ago, and was repelled by the image of a crying boy surrounded by mutants.. however, I’m not going to let that stop me trying the game out.. that would be silly!
A Little Minecraft Project.. and a Texture Pack
A few things have changed since I first set up my Minecraft server.. I turned off the mobs, to avoid creeper-related destruction.. and updated the server to 1.8, to take advantage of proper flight. VoxelAir is certainly better than nothing, but the flight in the 1.8 update is much nicer to use, allowing tiny, fine-controlled movements. I also started using the creative mode, because after all, this server is for creating things 🙂
I started on a Dwarven Fortress..
The rest of the fortress is inside the mountain.. carved out with VoxelSniper, and the rest created by myself and a friend. In just a few days we’ve built most of a city down here! 🙂
We’ve got shops, a brewery, a Tavern and a vast mine leading all the way down to the bedrock.. lit by lava 🙂
After a little poking, I installed a texture pack.. Better Armour Dokucraft.. which actually looks far better than I expected, especially on the lava.. though I’m less keen on how unmined minerals appear.
While playing around with VoxelSniper, my friend managed to add some interesting new friends to the world.. though they were most definitely not welcome inside the Fortress!
